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It was rude of me to get you all fired up about pour-over brewing and not offer you a recipe or a "how-to". For that, I sincerely apologize. BUT, as promised, here is my perfect V-60 pour-over technique.
A few caveats before we get started. It is important to know that there is no “One-size-fits-all” recipe for your coffee beans. The same technique used on a lightly roasted Costa Rican Coffee will probably not work well for a darkly roasted African blend. For this reason, I will dedicate an entire section (at the end of this blog) to explaining some of the ways to tweak the recipe to fit your coffee. Even after reading through my technique and that final section, please keep in mind that TASTE is the most important thing. If your brew does not taste good to you, then you need to mess with the recipe. In this blog I will give you my perfect V-60 pour-over recipe, followed by some techniques to tweak your pre-brewing process to better suit your selected coffee beans, and I will finish with some post-brew troubleshooting tips.
Mac’s Perfect V-60 Technique
The Foreword
This technique is an amalgamation of every technique video I have ever watched, every book I have read, and every recipe from every coffee professional I have spoken to. With the tweaks I suggest later in the pre-brew and post-brew process this technique has been money for me. If you want to spend the countless hours that I have done researching and learning more about pour-over techniques, then I will add some links here to the techniques/information I like the best:
· James Hoffman V-60 Technique) [First one I ever tried]
· Lance Hedrick V-60 Technique
· "How To Make The Best Coffee At Home" by James Hoffmann
· (A Super Nerdy One) "The Physics Of Filter Coffee" by Jonathan Gagne
The Prep
To get started, you will need all of the equipment mentioned in the last blog. My favorite V-60, hopefully you 2-day Prime shipped it to your house already. Hot water is next, so get the water on the boil. Whether you have tap water or bottled water, electric gooseneck or humble kitchen pot, just work with what you have. In my case I will use my Third Wave Water for brewing coffee, and my Fellow Stagg EKG and get that water boiling to 205 degrees. Get your coffee filter and fold the seam so it fits nicely into your brewer. Once you have the filter in your brewer, rinse it under some hot water to remove the papery taste from the filter. If you leave your filter un-rinsed you will taste it in your coffee. Now your beans, you need to grind your beans to a medium-fine consistency. Below is a photo of how my grounds look,
Getting your grind size right is hard, so I would recommend just going for it then changing it later based on taste. For my technique I will be using 30 grams of ground coffee and 500 grams of water for brewing. The golden ratio in specialty coffee is the 1:16 ratio of coffee grounds to brew water. My ratio is more like 1:16.666666667 but I recommend anywhere from 1:16-1:17. I just recommend keeping your ratio as a constant, and we will make other tweaks later based on taste. Just choose a ratio and stick to it. Place the grinds into the filter and shake the brewer to level out the grounds. Now what I like to do is take my finger, or the end of a spoon or something and make a little crater in the middle of the grounds. Then place the brewer on top of a carafe or vessel large enough to hold all your brewed coffee. Place all of that on top of a scale and once your water is at the right temperature, we are ready to brew.
The Brew
Start your first pour in a circular motion and pour 75g of water on the ground coffee. Pick up the brewer (see, you are glad you have a plastic brewer instead of a metal one at this point, that water is hot, and that would not feel nice on your hand. TOLD YOU SO) and swirl the coffee gently to make sure all the grounds are covered in the water. Do not be too aggressive with the swirling, I find a lot of people make this mistake. Swirling too aggressively can cause the really finely ground coffee particles to clog up the filter making your brew take longer and taste worse. Let the coffee sit for 60 seconds. At the one-minute mark start pouring in a circular motion again, aiming to pour 185 more grams of water (250g total) within the next 30 seconds. Give the brewer an even gentler swirl/shake now to make sure the bed of coffee is nice and even. Now let the coffee brew until you hit the two minute mark. At that point begin to pour in a slower circular pattern until you reach the 400g mark. Let the coffee brew until 2:45. Then slowly pour the last 100 grams (500g total) of water in the brewer in a really tight circular pour aimed for the center of the brewer. Let the coffee drain, this should take about 3:45 to 4:30 to drain all the way and enjoy!
Here is an abbreviated version of this recipe so you can copy it and save it into your phone notes.
Mac’s Perfect Pour-over Recipe:
1. Grind 30 Grams of coffee to a medium/medium-fine grind size.
2. Put your filter in your dripper and rinse the filter with hot water.
3. Pour coffee grounds into filter, make an indent, and place on carafe or cup, put on top of scale.
4. 0:00 Begin pouring 205 degree water in a circular motion, covering all grounds until you pour a total 75 grams of water within 30 seconds. Swirl the dripper gently to make sure all of the coffee is covered in water and the grinds are evenly distributed at the bottom of the dripper.
5. 1:00 Pour another 185 grams of water (reaching 250 grams total) in a circular pattern within 30 seconds. Give another gentle swirl to the dripper.
6. 2:00 Pour another 150 grams of water (Reaching 400 grams total) in a circular pattern over the grounds within 30 seconds.
7. 2:45 pour the last 100 grams (reaching 500 total) in a tighter circular pattern and allow for all water to drain (around 3:45 to 4:30)
8. Enjoy!
Pre-Brew Fixes
Like I said, it is impossible to have a one-size-fits-all technique, but here are some tips to tailor the recipe to your specific coffee. My exact recipe is really good for a medium roasted coffee. This is what I most often brew. If your roast level is different, then you must know this. The lighter the beans, the harder it is to release all of its flavor, the darker the beans, the easier it is to release all of the flavor. This is important to note because this affects both the grind size and the water temp. If I were brewing a very oily dark roasted bean, then I would turn the temperature down on my kettle to around 195 and I would grind a little bit coarser than I would for a medium roast. If I were brewing a really lightly roasted coffee, I would do the opposite. I would brew with water just off the boil and I would grind a little bit finer than I would for a medium. The water temp and the grind size are two important variables to look at before you brew to inform you of a good starting spot for your brew. This is why it is so important to have a coffee grinder, because if you buy your coffee pre-ground then you have no control over the grind size if you need to change it at all. The water is a little easier, if you are just boiling with a pot of water; for darker roasts, I would bring that water to a boil then let it sit for a minute or two before I started brewing with it, and for the lighter roasts I would use it right off boil. No need for fancy gooseneck there, although it makes the process of pouring and setting temperature a lot easier.
Post-brew Fixes
You have brewed your first pour-over (Maybe)! How does it taste? Is it great? Or does it suck. Well, if it sucks then here are some things to help fix it. Did your coffee take a long time past that 3:45 to 4:30 mark to finally drain? Did it take like 5-7 minutes or even longer? Did it also taste super bitter? If this is describes your cup, then you definitely over-extracted the coffee. This is a fancy way of saying you brewed the coffee too much and too long. To solve this, you should grind coarser. If grinding coarser doesn’t solve the problem, then consider dropping the temp of your water.
REMINDER: ONLY EVER CHANGE ONE VARIABLE AT A TIME WHEN MAKING CHANGES TO YOUR METHOD! Failure to do so will make it impossible to know what variable made your brew better or worse!
Maybe your brew did not taste super bitter and did not take too long to brew. Did your brew happen super-fast, like faster than the 3:30 minute mark? Does it taste super sour? Then you possibly under-extracted your coffee. This is a fancy way of saying you did not do a good enough job of brewing the coffee. In this case you need to grind a bit finer to allow the brew to take longer and for the beans to have a longer contact time with the water. Increasing the water brewing temperature can also help brew your coffee better in this situation.
I know all of this sounds tedious, like way too finicky for a morning routine. Remember, practice makes perfect! Once you are familiar with the grinding range on your grinder and are used to making these small tweaks in the right direction, the better you will be at anticipating changes in method for new coffee beans you receive. In the industry we like to refer to this process as “Dialing in”. The practice of dialing in a new coffee is the process of making your changes to the grind and water temperature and other variables to make the resulting cup of a new bean you have, perfect.
Conclusion
Please remember to have fun in the dialing in process. If this is your first foray into pour-over brewing, do not be discouraged by gross tasting cups of coffee. Learning through trial and error are key to helping you learn more about coffee and the process of brewing it. If you have any coffee brewing related questions, please feel free to email me at bigmacbrews@gmail.com, or consult the videos and reading material listed above. I am considering making this into an easily accessible YouTube video. If you think that will be helpful, then let me know. If you need coffee, then of course you should visit TemeculaCoffeeRoasters.com and check out some of our amazing coffee.
God Bless,
Mac Gooden
It was rude of me to get you all fired up about pour-over brewing and not offer you a recipe or a "how-to". For that, I sincerely apologize. BUT, as promised, here is my perfect V-60 pour-over technique.
A few caveats before we get started. It is important to know that there is no “One-size-fits-all” recipe for your coffee beans. The same technique used on a lightly roasted Costa Rican Coffee will probably not work well for a darkly roasted African blend. For this reason, I will dedicate an entire section (at the end of this blog) to explaining some of the ways to tweak the recipe to fit your coffee. Even after reading through my technique and that final section, please keep in mind that TASTE is the most important thing. If your brew does not taste good to you, then you need to mess with the recipe. In this blog I will give you my perfect V-60 pour-over recipe, followed by some techniques to tweak your pre-brewing process to better suit your selected coffee beans, and I will finish with some post-brew troubleshooting tips.
Mac’s Perfect V-60 Technique
The Foreword
This technique is an amalgamation of every technique video I have ever watched, every book I have read, and every recipe from every coffee professional I have spoken to. With the tweaks I suggest later in the pre-brew and post-brew process this technique has been money for me. If you want to spend the countless hours that I have done researching and learning more about pour-over techniques, then I will add some links here to the techniques/information I like the best:
· James Hoffman V-60 Technique) [First one I ever tried]
· Lance Hedrick V-60 Technique
· "How To Make The Best Coffee At Home" by James Hoffmann
· (A Super Nerdy One) "The Physics Of Filter Coffee" by Jonathan Gagne
The Prep
To get started, you will need all of the equipment mentioned in the last blog. My favorite V-60, hopefully you 2-day Prime shipped it to your house already. Hot water is next, so get the water on the boil. Whether you have tap water or bottled water, electric gooseneck or humble kitchen pot, just work with what you have. In my case I will use my Third Wave Water for brewing coffee, and my Fellow Stagg EKG and get that water boiling to 205 degrees. Get your coffee filter and fold the seam so it fits nicely into your brewer. Once you have the filter in your brewer, rinse it under some hot water to remove the papery taste from the filter. If you leave your filter un-rinsed you will taste it in your coffee. Now your beans, you need to grind your beans to a medium-fine consistency. Below is a photo of how my grounds look,
Getting your grind size right is hard, so I would recommend just going for it then changing it later based on taste. For my technique I will be using 30 grams of ground coffee and 500 grams of water for brewing. The golden ratio in specialty coffee is the 1:16 ratio of coffee grounds to brew water. My ratio is more like 1:16.666666667 but I recommend anywhere from 1:16-1:17. I just recommend keeping your ratio as a constant, and we will make other tweaks later based on taste. Just choose a ratio and stick to it. Place the grinds into the filter and shake the brewer to level out the grounds. Now what I like to do is take my finger, or the end of a spoon or something and make a little crater in the middle of the grounds. Then place the brewer on top of a carafe or vessel large enough to hold all your brewed coffee. Place all of that on top of a scale and once your water is at the right temperature, we are ready to brew.
The Brew
Start your first pour in a circular motion and pour 75g of water on the ground coffee. Pick up the brewer (see, you are glad you have a plastic brewer instead of a metal one at this point, that water is hot, and that would not feel nice on your hand. TOLD YOU SO) and swirl the coffee gently to make sure all the grounds are covered in the water. Do not be too aggressive with the swirling, I find a lot of people make this mistake. Swirling too aggressively can cause the really finely ground coffee particles to clog up the filter making your brew take longer and taste worse. Let the coffee sit for 60 seconds. At the one-minute mark start pouring in a circular motion again, aiming to pour 185 more grams of water (250g total) within the next 30 seconds. Give the brewer an even gentler swirl/shake now to make sure the bed of coffee is nice and even. Now let the coffee brew until you hit the two minute mark. At that point begin to pour in a slower circular pattern until you reach the 400g mark. Let the coffee brew until 2:45. Then slowly pour the last 100 grams (500g total) of water in the brewer in a really tight circular pour aimed for the center of the brewer. Let the coffee drain, this should take about 3:45 to 4:30 to drain all the way and enjoy!
Here is an abbreviated version of this recipe so you can copy it and save it into your phone notes.
Mac’s Perfect Pour-over Recipe:
1. Grind 30 Grams of coffee to a medium/medium-fine grind size.
2. Put your filter in your dripper and rinse the filter with hot water.
3. Pour coffee grounds into filter, make an indent, and place on carafe or cup, put on top of scale.
4. 0:00 Begin pouring 205 degree water in a circular motion, covering all grounds until you pour a total 75 grams of water within 30 seconds. Swirl the dripper gently to make sure all of the coffee is covered in water and the grinds are evenly distributed at the bottom of the dripper.
5. 1:00 Pour another 185 grams of water (reaching 250 grams total) in a circular pattern within 30 seconds. Give another gentle swirl to the dripper.
6. 2:00 Pour another 150 grams of water (Reaching 400 grams total) in a circular pattern over the grounds within 30 seconds.
7. 2:45 pour the last 100 grams (reaching 500 total) in a tighter circular pattern and allow for all water to drain (around 3:45 to 4:30)
8. Enjoy!
Pre-Brew Fixes
Like I said, it is impossible to have a one-size-fits-all technique, but here are some tips to tailor the recipe to your specific coffee. My exact recipe is really good for a medium roasted coffee. This is what I most often brew. If your roast level is different, then you must know this. The lighter the beans, the harder it is to release all of its flavor, the darker the beans, the easier it is to release all of the flavor. This is important to note because this affects both the grind size and the water temp. If I were brewing a very oily dark roasted bean, then I would turn the temperature down on my kettle to around 195 and I would grind a little bit coarser than I would for a medium roast. If I were brewing a really lightly roasted coffee, I would do the opposite. I would brew with water just off the boil and I would grind a little bit finer than I would for a medium. The water temp and the grind size are two important variables to look at before you brew to inform you of a good starting spot for your brew. This is why it is so important to have a coffee grinder, because if you buy your coffee pre-ground then you have no control over the grind size if you need to change it at all. The water is a little easier, if you are just boiling with a pot of water; for darker roasts, I would bring that water to a boil then let it sit for a minute or two before I started brewing with it, and for the lighter roasts I would use it right off boil. No need for fancy gooseneck there, although it makes the process of pouring and setting temperature a lot easier.
Post-brew Fixes
You have brewed your first pour-over (Maybe)! How does it taste? Is it great? Or does it suck. Well, if it sucks then here are some things to help fix it. Did your coffee take a long time past that 3:45 to 4:30 mark to finally drain? Did it take like 5-7 minutes or even longer? Did it also taste super bitter? If this is describes your cup, then you definitely over-extracted the coffee. This is a fancy way of saying you brewed the coffee too much and too long. To solve this, you should grind coarser. If grinding coarser doesn’t solve the problem, then consider dropping the temp of your water.
REMINDER: ONLY EVER CHANGE ONE VARIABLE AT A TIME WHEN MAKING CHANGES TO YOUR METHOD! Failure to do so will make it impossible to know what variable made your brew better or worse!
Maybe your brew did not taste super bitter and did not take too long to brew. Did your brew happen super-fast, like faster than the 3:30 minute mark? Does it taste super sour? Then you possibly under-extracted your coffee. This is a fancy way of saying you did not do a good enough job of brewing the coffee. In this case you need to grind a bit finer to allow the brew to take longer and for the beans to have a longer contact time with the water. Increasing the water brewing temperature can also help brew your coffee better in this situation.
I know all of this sounds tedious, like way too finicky for a morning routine. Remember, practice makes perfect! Once you are familiar with the grinding range on your grinder and are used to making these small tweaks in the right direction, the better you will be at anticipating changes in method for new coffee beans you receive. In the industry we like to refer to this process as “Dialing in”. The practice of dialing in a new coffee is the process of making your changes to the grind and water temperature and other variables to make the resulting cup of a new bean you have, perfect.
Conclusion
Please remember to have fun in the dialing in process. If this is your first foray into pour-over brewing, do not be discouraged by gross tasting cups of coffee. Learning through trial and error are key to helping you learn more about coffee and the process of brewing it. If you have any coffee brewing related questions, please feel free to email me at bigmacbrews@gmail.com, or consult the videos and reading material listed above. I am considering making this into an easily accessible YouTube video. If you think that will be helpful, then let me know. If you need coffee, then of course you should visit TemeculaCoffeeRoasters.com and check out some of our amazing coffee.
God Bless,
Mac Gooden
Irina Gedarevich
